"A victim of severe altitude sickness suffers
acute cardio-respiratory distress," Dr. Alfonso
del Castillo told me. "He is short of breath
and lightheaded, feels nausea, and has head
aches and a galloping heartbeat.
"Normally, lowlanders who move up here
adapt over several months. The body pro
duces more red blood corpuscles to capture
the scarce oxygen molecules. You, for example,
probably have about five million red cor
puscles per cubic millimeter in your blood,
normal for a sea-level man. If you stay here
on the Altiplano long enough, you should
acquire at least half a million more."
At the end of two months in the high Andes,
I found Dr. del Castillo's prediction fulfilled;
my red count had increased by 800,000.
Boiling Point Drops as Cooks Go Up
The sea-level housewife who moves to the
Altiplano must learn to cook all over again.
The boiling point of water drops about one
degree Fahrenheit for every 550 feet of alti
tude, so that in the vicinity of Titicaca water
boils at 189°. A Puno housewife told me she
cooked a soft-boiled egg twice as long as
down on the coast. "And if I put the normal
amount of leavening in bread or cake dough,
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